talking, and secretaries in long gray head scarves moving silently past them, taking orders and runlling errands, never smil- ing, their eyes trained on the ground. ' d they have a huge problem with women. They think that their model of emancipation is the emancipation. But girls who want to stay in school, girls who want to be doctors-that's not the only model." Alaoui has followers all over France. He claims that a hundred thousand people came to the last yearly meeting of his Islamic union, in Le Bourget, and that both men and women had been invited to participate. But the women who did come were seated apart from the men, and most of them were enveloped in caftans and shawls. Alaoui is not a particularly pleasant character. He is a French Moroccan with none of the grace or humor of a Moroc- can host and most of the arrogance of a French bureaucrat. He had a list of griev- ances, some of them true, and some of them shared by other Frenchmen: Chi- rac, before putting together his commis- sion with Bernard Stasi, had essentially cancelled funding for the part-time high- CD school jobs that thousands of students counted on for a small salary (true); the commission itself had called a hundred and sixty-nine witnesses, but "only ten or fifteen were against the veil law" (false). He neglected to mention that when one veiled woman was called to testify a man in her family whispered instructions in her ear, insulted the commissioners, and then ac- cused them of harassment. And Alaoui had nothing at all to say on the subject of veil enthusiasts like the French -Tunisian writer Fawzia Zouari, who maintained, improbably, that the veil wasn't a sign of religious submission but an emblem of feminism, a way of saying "Je m'en jòu d'hommes.''' and "like Islamic architec- ture, a way you can see out but no one can see in." Or, you could say; the veil as a bad hair da)!. A month later, she insisted to me that there were no laws forcing women to veil in Iran, only "advisories." T here has been a good deal of dis- cussion about the veil law among women who consider themselves to be strong French feminists. Ségolène Royal is a popular Socialist deputy and the new START: YOUR ÐEsK fINISH: LIVIN&-ROOM SOfA EST, DISTANCE . OOOOg MIL E EST. TIME: 7.5 SECONDS . 1.1.12 2 ,"" .., ""ù""""""".L '." :,?;i::;x:, ;-""';:;,1;: . ....,',... ' ! ' 6) At -\-\'l. eVlð of tj lJL,\ r C ð\ r J ,00601 r't'\il . Md\ce rì ht. , .": , ' , ' , t;, Co nt i v{ +i II (, J of de k I \!:J ,00001 r'Y\;\! :: o-Y\J.. rV\ k! c.\ Ç ( p l f +. ;jr,,(i) 0ö Stro.i'j + OVI ct\r {t. ,00003 'Ile :';1<:,(5) ßeð. r \tft <At t J of l.Q...rf!i. . OOOOl M;/e. \eft O\-1to sof . ,00001 le (L u...r- governor of Poitou-Charentes, and a re- freshingly outspoken presence in the sni:fíY male sanctum of French politics. She has reservations about the new law, although she voted for it. She says she is more con- cerned about the effect of pornography on children than she is about scarves (which, to her mind, can be "very pretty . . . like the bonnets in A:&icà'). She told me, "Yes, I would say that the veil is a symbol of the oppression and segregation of women, but how do you resolve the problems of Muslim women in a society like this, where all the bus kiosks have advertising posters with naked women on them?" She worries about what will happen to those Muslim women if there is a blanket en- forcement of sexual integration. But many feminists would argue that the Islamist obsession with covering up women's bod- ies is a deeper form of pornography than an obsession with uncovering them. Anne Hidalgo, the deputy mayor of Paris, whose portfolio includes women's rights (the French say "equality between men and women"), has no reservations about the law. She told me about some of the storefront prayer rooms she has helped open in immigrant neighbor- hoods-neighborhoods where Muslims had nowhere to pray but the sidewalks- and said that she worries about new preachers coming in and trying to under- mine the law, and even preventing girls and women from taking part in mosque activities. She and the mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, are Socialists, though they have been much more inventive than most pol- iticians in their party in making French Muslims feel welcome. They sponsor Friday lunches at high schools in Mus- lim neighborhoods, so the girls and their teachers can get together and talk things over. They throw a big party at city hall to celebrate the end of Ramadan each year. But they believe that head scarves in schools are only the beginning of Is- lamist demands for exceptional status within French law. (Hidalgo's friend Martine Aubry, the Socialist mayor of Lille, has stretched the law to meet Is- lamist sensibilities by closing municipal pools to men for several hours a week so that Muslim women can bathe alone.) Hidalgo, who is the daughter of Span- ish Republican immigrants, said, "We've been very perturbed about the veil. To see those very young girls veiled. . . The 'evolution' of the veil here isn't about